As the United States debates whether China’s inexorable rise is best frustrated by derisking or decoupling their respective economies, it has kept its eyes firmly on Hong Kong. It appreciates the city’s importance to China, which is why it has been repeatedly targeted. If Hong Kong can be undermined, it will adversely affect the country, and it is a source of intense frustration to Washington that its businesses have not played along.
In 2020, when the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL) was enacted to restore normality after the insurrection of the previous year and secure the city’s future, the then-president, Donald Trump, made his move. He ended Hong Kong’s special trading status and ordered that the “Made in Hong Kong” labels be removed from US-bound exports. He told Fox News of his hope that its economy would “fail” and that “Hong Kong markets will go to hell” (Aug 14). If this had happened, it would have destroyed the livelihoods of many ordinary working people, but for Trump, this was only collateral damage.
However, due to Hong Kong’s grit and resilience, it did not happen, and the US was incensed. Once, therefore, Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump, he tried again. In 2021, he issued his notorious “Hong Kong business advisory”, which warned US companies of the risks of doing business in Hong Kong (July 16). As Hong Kong at that time was not only getting back on its feet after the insurrection but also struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, this was as dastardly an act as could be imagined, and demonstrated the depths to which the US was prepared to sink to harm China.
If the major US companies had listened to Biden, Hong Kong’s workers would have been the big losers, but fortunately, they did not.
On March 3, 2024, for example, the US banking giant Citigroup announced it will expand its wealth management business in the Greater Bay Area and the rest of Asia from its base in Hong Kong. Its global-wealth head, Andy Sieg, said, “Our commitment to Hong Kong and China could not be stronger,” adding that “Hong Kong is the epicenter of this global wealth creation.”
When asked about the recent comments by former Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach that “Hong Kong is over,” Sieg strongly disagreed. He said he had “spent almost a week with our team and clients, and they are all incredibly optimistic about the future of Hong Kong as a market and incredibly energized about the business opportunity for Citi in Hong Kong.”
This was clearly the last thing Biden wanted to hear, but worse was to follow.
On March 13, 2024, JPMorgan, the New York-based bank that began in Hong Kong in 1924, also snubbed him and announced it will continue to invest in Hong Kong. Its president and chief operating officer, Daniel Pinto, said, “We will continue to do the business that we are doing and continue growing,” which was not surprising. The bank, which oversees $2.6 trillion, counts the China region as half its Asia-wide business, and it also made clear that it would continue hiring in China for its asset-management business.
Although this was galling for Biden, it was only part of the picture. Earlier, on Jan 30, 2024, the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (AmCham) released its 2024 Members Business Sentiment Survey Findings Report, and he must have found it grim reading. Whereas 96 percent of members assessed their business in the past 12 months as “fair to excellent,” 81 percent recorded the same or an increase in revenue in 2023 compared to 2022. Showing their levels of engagement, approximately 67 percent of AmCham members were now doing business in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao-Greater Bay Area.
In a further blow for Biden, 76 percent of respondents regarded Hong Kong as a competitive international business hub in Asia. This was because of its international connectivity, free flow of capital, and low and simple tax, legal and regulatory systems. While companies reported that foreign businesses were still largely welcomed in Hong Kong, 68 percent of those surveyed saw the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government as effective in responding to business concerns and opportunities, with 89 percent seeing it as supportive of the development of innovation and technology.
In a vote of confidence in Hong Kong’s legal system, the AmCham survey found that whereas 79 percent of members had confidence in the rule of law, 82 percent had confidence in data freedom (which remained “robust”). Moreover, 72 percent of respondents believed Hong Kong would remain a preferred destination for arbitration and dispute resolution, and few will gainsay that.
Given Western propaganda, it was noteworthy that 69 percent reported that their operations had not been adversely affected by the NSL (an improvement of 7 percent over the previous year). This strongly suggested that as the NSL becomes more bedded down and better understood, so do concerns subside. Where negative effects were reported, 65 percent were associated with indirect problems, such as staff departures, low morale, and the diversion of resources to seeking guidance and/or compliance.
Once the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO), which completed the national security exercise, was enacted on March 23, 2024, the US was again up in arms, blasting off condemnations in all directions. This was despite having a battery of robust national security laws of its own, backed up by the death penalty (abolished in Hong Kong in 1993). Even though the SNSO’s formulation drew heavily on the UK’s national security laws (the sabotage law, for example, bears an uncanny resemblance to the sabotage offense in the UK’s National Security Act 2023, s.12), the US demonized it, while having nothing to say about the British law which helped spawn it.
However, while Washington propagandized, AmCham once again kept its head, eschewing its hysteria. This was apparent when its chairman, Geoff Siebengartner, four months after the SNSO’s enactment, led a delegation to the US from July 8 to 11 and briefed policy experts and think tank, trade and commerce officials.
According to the AmCham HK e-Magazine (July/August 2024), the delegation explained that “a large number of members are hunkering down and not leaving Hong Kong, are still confident in the rule of law and believe in Hong Kong as an excellent place to do business”. It faced many questions about Hong Kong, largely because most of the interlocutors had not visited the city over the last five years (meaning they had no firsthand experience and had to rely for their news on their government’s propaganda). The audiences were said to be “marginally impressed” by what they were told, and the delegation’s “takeaway (was) that Hong Kong must continue to strengthen its ‘two systems’ characteristics”.
In other words, AmCham was able to reassure its interlocutors that the situation in Hong Kong was far rosier than the anti-China brigade would have people believe, that its people on the ground had confidence in the rule of law, and that the city, despite the efforts of Trump and Biden, was still a great place for business.
However, Biden was not interested. On Sept 6, citing “new and heightened risks,” he issued an “updated Hong Kong business advisory”. Although his 2021 business advisory was worthless and achieved nothing, this global bullyboy sought once again to target little Hong Kong. However, nobody should be surprised, as he clearly believes, like Trump before him, that there are votes to be had (in November's presidential election) in going after the “little guy”.
Although US-based companies, and American businesses operating in Hong Kong, have demonstrated their unwavering faith in the city, Biden once again sought to alarm them for base reasons of his own. Despite the fears he expressed in 2021 having not materialized, he regurgitated the same old themes. He waxed lyrical about the “risks to their operations and activities in Hong Kong,” singling out the “broad and vague provisions of the NSL and the SNSO”.
However, as successive US governments have “cried wolf” all too often, Biden must expect to be ignored again. It is blindingly obvious that he is casting around for justifications for trying, as the secretary for constitutional and mainland affairs, Erick Tsang Kwok-wai, has put it, “to suppress our country’s development, as well as Hong Kong’s”.
As Biden has shown in Gaza and Ukraine, he is a threat to world peace, and his attempts to destabilize China by undermining Hong Kong are contemptible. His grandstanding is politically driven and has demeaned his administration. His latest business advisory should be condemned by everybody who believes in global development and stability — and fair play.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
